Sol 1950-1951: North by northeast

We are back on Vera Rubin Ridge today after a short diversion into the phyllosilicate unit. Our workspace this morning contained rocks in various shades of red. The remote sensing and contact science observations we planned today are designed to investigate the chemistry, spectral properties, and fine scale textures associated with these color changes.

We chose one contact science target, "Balmedie," that we will brush and observe with MAHLI and APXS. This rock was one of the only rocks in the workspace that was big enough to safely brush, and the observations we take will provide information about the properties of the bedrock in the area. We will also take a Mastcam multispectral observation of Balmedie and its surroundings. After the contact science block, we will collect ChemCam observations of bedrock targets that have different colors, "Killiecrankie" and "Bennachie," and an RMI mosaic of a distant target on Mt. Sharp named "Muchalls." Mastcam will document the two ChemCam laser targets, and we will also take a 7x2 stereo mosaic of a distant target "Harris Bay," which is a potential geologic contact. The first sol of the plan will end with a drive to the northeast. We will take a ChemCam automatically targeted AEGIS observation on the second sol of the plan, and some ChemCam calibration targets and a dust devil search.

In addition to the ongoing operations, this week is a particularly exciting because all of the Curiosity science team members are traveling to Pasadena for our bi-annual meeting. We will converse about the latest data and share our interpretations with one another. Team members are located all across the world, so it's wonderful to be able to meet face to face to discuss all of our recent results!

About this Blog

These blog updates are provided by self-selected Mars Science Laboratory mission team members who love to share what Curiosity is doing with the public.

Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.

Contributors

Sterling Algermissen

Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Ryan Anderson

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Mariah Baker

Planetary Geologist; Johns Hopkins University; Baltimore, MD

Michael Battalio

Atmospheric Scientist; Texas A&M University; College Station, TX

Kristen Bennett

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Fred Calef

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Brittney Cooper

Atmospheric Scientist; York University; Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Sean Czarnecki

Planetary Geologist; Arizona State University; Tempe, AZ

Lauren Edgar

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Christopher Edwards

Planetary Geologist; Northern Arizona University; Flagstaff, AZ

Abigail Fraeman

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Scott Guzewich

Atmospheric Scientist; NASA/GSFC; Greenbelt, MD

Samantha Gwizd

Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN

Ken Herkenhoff

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Rachel Kronyak

Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN

Sarah Lamm

Planetary Geologist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM

Michelle Minitti

Planetary Geologist; Framework; Silver Spring, MD

Claire Newman

Atmospheric Scientist, Aeolis Research; Pasadena, CA

Catherine O’Connell

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Melissa Rice

Planetary Geologist; Western Washington University; Bellingham, WA

Mark Salvatore

Planetary Geologist; University of Michigan; Dearborn, MI

Susanne Schwenzer

Planetary Geologist; The Open University; Milton Keynes, U.K.

Ashley Stroupe

Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Dawn Sumner

Planetary Geologist; University of California Davis; Davis, CA

Vivian Sun

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Lucy Thompson

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Ashwin Vasavada

MSL Project Scientist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Roger Wiens

Geochemist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM

Tools on the Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover has tools to study clues about past and present environmental conditions on Mars, including whether conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life. The rover carries:

In our last plan, we carried out triage activities on the red Jura target, "Rock Hall," including APXS of the target to determine composition, and engineering tests to assess the stability of the rock and its hardness, both of which would affect our ability to drill.

The drive around to the north side of "Rock Hall" in yesterday's plan was successful, placing us at a lower tilt and with room in the workspace to place all the piles of sample we drop on the surface (purposely!) in the aftermath of drilling.

Today Curiosity is preparing for the imminent arrival of a new visitor to Mars, just as many of us are preparing for the out-of-town visitors who'll be descending into our homes over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Today was a good day on Mars. The science and engineering teams are making preparations to drill a patch of grey bedrock named "Highfield", which will be our latest attempt to characterize this unique rock unit on Vera Rubin Ridge.

Over the past few days, engineers here at JPL have been working to address an issue on Curiosity that is preventing it from sending much of the science and engineering data stored in its memory. The rover remains in its normal mode and is otherwise healthy and responsive.

In our case, the Curiosity rover! The main focus of our 2-sol (sol - martian day) plan today is to bump (drive ~15 m) the rover into place for an attempt at drilling an interesting grey coloured patch of bedrock, identified from orbit within the Jura member of the Murray formation on the Vera Rubin Ridge, referred to as "Loch Eriboll."

Curiosity's plan for the weekend is extra large - 4 sols and almost 3 gigabits of data! We planned 4 sols due to the Labor Day weekend, and the hefty data volume is courtesy of extra downlink from two special orbiters.

Today in Gale Crater, Curiosity begins with a short (but sweet) science block that utilizes ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam to observe the Martian surface and atmosphere. We start off with a ChemCam LIBS raster of the target "Cairntoul," and then Mastcam mosaics of the same target, as well as "Monar Dam."

Our second attempt at a dump was successful! The plan for Sol 2155 starts with a whole slew of Mastcam images to check out various components of the arm turret, plus a MAHLI observation of the dump pile.

If all had gone according to plan over the weekend, we would see a nice pile of drill fines. Alas, a slight hiccup in the sample dump process meant that the "Stoer" sample was still in the drill and turret.

With seventeen sampling holes and several test holes, you might imagine that Curiosity is creating a rather long and erratic golf course in Gale crater. After all, Alan Shepard shot a golf ball on the Moon.

With the successful drilling of the Stoer target two weeks ago, Curiosity has been busy characterizing the surrounding terrain using its remote instrument package, performing contact science in the immediate vicinity to understand the composition and physical nature of the bedrock, and also performing power-intensive lab-quality analyses of the Stoer sample using its onboard analytical instruments.

Unlike normal weekend plans for Curiosity that encompass three martian days, this plan only covers two. This "Soliday Sunday" isn't really a day off for the rover like it implies, but instead allows the planning schedule on Earth and Mars to get back in sync.

The planning day began with an interesting result from the previous plan's ChemCam RMI analysis of a target that was referred to as "Pettegrove Point Foreign Object Debris" (PPFOD), and speculated to be a piece of spacecraft debris.

After a weekend full of contact science, remote science, and driving, Curiosity arrived at her next drill site within the Pettegrove Point member. Our previous two drilling attempts within the Pettegrove Point member haven't been as successful as we'd have hoped; the rocks in this area are much harder than we're used to - all the more reason to acquire and analyze a drill sample. We're hopeful that our third drilling attempt does the trick!

Curiosity is currently on her way to a potentially softer rock target to drill in the Pettegrove Point member of Vera Rubin Ridge. Today was a late slide sol, which means we had to wait until 11am PDT for the downlink to arrive. Unfortunately, we didn't get our downlink today from MRO.

On Sol 2128, Curiosity will continue toward our third potential drill site within the Pettegrove Point member of Vera Rubin Ridge, where we are hoping to find slightly softer rocks. The day will begin with ChemCam observations of the target "Slioch," which was already analyzed by APXS, as well as the layered rock "Craignure Bay."

Our attempt at drilling the target "Ailsa Craig" was partly successful: the drill behaved exactly as it was supposed to, but unfortunately we weren't able to drill very deep. The rock here is just too hard! Since we didn't get a nice deep drill hole, the plan for the weekend is to do some final observations at this location and then move on another location to try again.

Curiosity made great progress yesterday across the "Vera Rubin Ridge" toward the site of our next drilling attempt at "Sgurr of Eigg". In this weekend plan, we will collect more data about the ridge materials around us, and the sky above us, before embarking on a ~12 m drive to Sgurr of Eigg.

After our attempt to drill the Voyageurs target did not reach sufficient depth due to the impressive hardness of the rock, the team is beginning to finish up its activities at this location before heading a bit further uphill to find a more suitable (i.e., softer) drill target.

Unfortunately, we found out this morning that the "Voyageurs" drill target was a much harder rock than expected. While our drill plan executed perfectly, our bit stopped short of the full depth we need for sampling.

I first became involved with Curiosity shortly after starting my third year of graduate school in the fall of 2011. My graduate advisor was selected to join the mission as a Participating Scientist, and he enlisted me to help analyze orbital data over Mt. Sharp as part of that role.

The image above shows the Mastcam view as of Sol 2104, in which the nearby terrain is clearly visible, but nothing beyond the foreground, and the entire scene looks a murky red-brown color due to the dust storm.

Curiosity stopped its drive a bit earlier than anticipated. It so happens that the autonomous software onboard Curiosity designed to keep it driving safely kicked in and ended the drive short of the planned distance.

Over the past week or so, Curiosity has experienced increasingly dusty conditions in Gale crater. Unlike her older cousin Opportunity on the other side of the planet, Curiosity is not solar powered and, therefore, doesn't suffer from the same power issues resulting from the darkening skies that Opportunity does.

The final several sols of Curiosity's drill activities at "Duluth" are devoted mostly to imaging and to analysis of the pile of drill tailings that are dumped on the ground after the delivery to the instruments.

On Earth we have multiple means of communication-cell phone, text messages, land line, e-mail, and good old snail mail. On Mars the rover basically has three-a UHF antenna that communicates with satellites orbiting Mars, a low-gain antenna (LGA) that does not need to be pointed but only handles a low data flow, and a high-gain antenna (HGA) that requires accurate knowledge of Earth's position to receive or send commands directly.

Today we planned a weekend's worth of activities for Curiosity. For our weekend plan, we have two main priorities: perform another analysis with CheMin on our Duluth drill sample and continue our campaign of dust storm monitoring.

The previous plan included some tests of the sample delivery system, including delivery of a single portion to the closed cover of the SAM inlet. The imaging showed a small amount made it, but not as much as we'd hoped.

Some of the Duluth drill sample was dropped into CheMin on Sol 2061, but not enough for a proper mineralogical analysis. So the top priority for today's plan is to again test the new drop-off procedure.

After successfully drilling the "Duluth" target on Sol 2057 (as seen in the above Mastcam image), the science team is eager to find out what it's made of. As SOWG Chair today, it was exciting to plan the drop-off of material to CheMin and overnight CheMin analysis. Hopefully we'll get some good data about the mineralogy of this sample!

I was excited to learn earlier this week that my native city was chosen as the name of the latest drill site on Mars! The name was selected by geologists on the mission to recognize the Duluth Complex, one of the largest intrusions of gabbro on Earth, along the north shore of Lake Superior.

Our sol 2054 plan was limited by a small morning downlink. Occasionally, the flight paths of the Mars orbiters over Gale Crater don't have favorable geometries for relays with Curiosity, and this means our data downlink passes are smaller than average. Today we received only 1.6 MB (Megabytes) of data at the start of our planning day.

A successful drive on Sol 2052 brought Curiosity within bumping distance of what will likely be our next intended drill target. The science team named this target "Duluth." Duluth is a beautifully exposed Murray formation block visible in the Navcam image above. From our current location, we have a really nice vantage point of both the top and sides of the Duluth block. Analyzing blocks that have this kind of 3-D expression gives us a great opportunity to assess the full architecture of the rock.

Rather than driving almost 11 meters, Curiosity only drove about 1/2 meter before stopping. So, we found ourselves looking at images of previous wheel tracks and contact science targets rather than a new location.

Today is the third and final day that I'm serving as SOWG Chair this week at JPL, and I was happy to see that the bump we originally planned for Sol 2046 completed successfully on Sol 2047, placing the rover in a good position for contact science on a couple of bright blocks in front of the rover.

In Curiosity-speak, a "bump" is a short drive the rover performs to better position itself for a particular science investigation (often contact science with the rover's arm). Yestersol's plan intended to include such a bump to reach a suitable target for contact science, but unfortunately the drive did not execute.

As Curiosity continues to descend the Vera Rubin Ridge and back into the Murray formation, the science team is doing their best to characterize, for a second time, all of the structural, chemical, and spectral variations originally seen as we climbed up the ridge.

Curiosity continued her journey off of the "Vera Rubin Ridge," driving west along the ridge flank toward a passable route down to the bedrock north of the ridge. Her stop today may have been brief, but it was ehhhhhhxcellent.

Following some fantastic preliminary imaging from yestersol, today's plan (Sol 2039) is dedicated to additional imaging of "Red Cliff" before continuing to drive toward a location where we think we are likely to drill. We have a short science block to start the day, during which we'll use Mastcam to take some context imaging of our surroundings and upcoming terrain.

Curiosity continues to pick her way downhill off the "Vera Rubin Ridge" and onto the Murray formation rocks below. This weekend's plan only covers two sols, to give Earth planning time and Mars time a chance to realign so that the science team is not up in the middle of the night commanding the rover.

Curiosity is continuing her march to the north and west, descending through the stratigraphic layers exposed in Vera Rubin Ridge and working her way back towards the unit known as the Blunts Point member, just below the ridge.

This drive was remarkable because it marked a shift in Curiosity's strategic campaign: we have officially finished our initial reconnaissance of Vera Rubin Ridge, and we are beginning our journey down off the ridge, heading north into an area where we would like to test the rover's drill.

This was a week of transition for Curiosity's environmental science team. The cloudy season on Mars has ended as we've seen a marked decrease in water ice cloud activity in our Navcam sky movies over the last several weeks and we're moving quickly into the dusty season on Mars.

Over the weekend Curiosity completed a 13 meter drive from some interesting float rocks including some potential breccias to "Suilven Ripple", a sand ripple where it will characterize the grain sizes and ripple morphology. Today is a 2-sol plan with no drive.

For the past few sols Curiosity has been exploring a diverse assemblage of cobbles and boulders on Vera Rubin Ridge, trying to understand how this blocky deposit came to be, and what the variety of rock types can tell us about geologic processes in Gale crater.

Like Harry Potter in Honeydukes or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, Curiosity rolled up to the proverbial candy store today, wondering "where to begin?!" The variety of rock types in the workspace, the likes of which had not been seen for many hundreds of sols, made picking favorites a challenge.

For much of the last year, Curiosity has been exploring fine-grained rocks along Vera Rubin Ridge, and investigating red and gray color variations. Recently, something else caught our eye: dark cobbles and boulders exposed in patches, as seen in the above Mastcam image.

After the weekend drive, the rover ended up in a spot that was a little too unstable to pass the Slip Risk Assessment Process (SRAP). That means that there is a slight chance that the rover's footing might shift if the robotic arm is extended, which is not ideal for the safety of our contact science instruments, so for the Sol 2011 plan we chose not to use the arm and instead focused on remote sensing.

For Sol 2004, Curiosity threw it back to the 2004's sleeper hit Mean Girls when the rover said, "Stop trying to make 'drive' happen." The weekend drive stopped after just a few meters due to a high current warning from the right middle wheel.

As we drive east across the top of "Vera Rubin Ridge" - backwards no less! - we encountered another nice patch of bedrock in Curiosity's workspace today, motivating multiple observations before we hit the road once again.

After a successful weekend plan, the team decided that for the sol 1991-1992 plan, we would trade a longer-distance drive in favor of some "touch and go" contact science. This ensures that we have a good record of the variations in chemistry and rock texture as we drive along the Vera Rubin Ridge.

Seasons make a big difference for Mars vistas. Tosol Mars is at solar longitude 139, meaning that it is halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox in the southern hemisphere where Curiosity resides.

Today, Sol 1980, we're taking a break from drilling activities to continue with our remote science campaign at our current location. We have three science blocks in today's plan, which we've filled to the brim with a variety of observations.

It is an exciting time for the Curiosity team. Although the drill was able to create a hole, Mars stubbornly refused to let the drill reach a depth where a rock sample could be collected and has driven Curiosity away from "Lake_Orcadie".

The tactical planning schedule was delayed by 2 hours today so that we would have the latest data from Sol 1977 available for planning. When the data arrived, it quickly became clear that the feed-extended drilling did not complete as planned.

Curiosity is officially go for drilling the "Lake Orcadie" target! After more than a year's wait for the drill to come back online, the rover planners and engineers are confident and ready to proceed with a test of a new drilling method in the coming days.

Over the weekend, Curiosity successfully off-loaded the sample she acquired previously, the "Ogunquit Beach" sand sample, in preparation for what the science team hopes is acquisition of a new *drilled* rock sample very soon.

We are planning 2 sols today to get a head start on the holiday weekend planning. We had several options today, including mobility and contact science with or without brushing, which made for an interesting day for me as SOWG Chair.

For the last several months, the science, engineering and operations teams have only met three days a week to plan activities for Curiosity in order to give the engineers more time to focus on bringing the drill back online.

Like yesterday, today's plan is a bit on the thin side, as the rover's power allotment will be primarily dedicated to activities associated with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and its preparation for a planned power-hungry experiment in tomorrow's plan.

Recovering from the SAM fault proved more challenging than expected, so our planned drive to the patch of pale tan bedrock in the image above did not take place. We took advantage of the fact that we have been parked at this same site for several sols to acquire both new and less-common types of observations.

Over the past several months we've made excellent progress up and along the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR), taking stunning mosaics and using our instrument payload to examine the local geology. Today we planned for Sols 1957-1958, during which we will continue our VRR investigations and drive further along to our next area of interest. Unfortunately, SAM experienced a minor fault over the weekend, so we'll be delaying those activities - a preconditioning test for an upcoming geochronology experiment - to Wednesday's (Sol 1959) plan.

We are back on Vera Rubin Ridge today after a short diversion into the phyllosilicate unit. Our workspace this morning contained rocks in various shades of red. The remote sensing and contact science observations we planned today are designed to investigate the chemistry, spectral properties, and fine scale textures associated with these color changes.

Curiosity diverted from our primary "Mount Sharp Ascent Route" a couple weeks ago as we continued to investigate the outcrops of bluish-toned rock that are scattered around this region of the Vera Rubin Ridge.

Having spent 1943 sols on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is in its 6th Earth year on Mars, but it is in its 3rd Mars year of exploration. That means Curiosity has encountered this season of the year twice before.

We're sorry, but we will not be posting updates to this blog during the government shutdown. Also, all public NASA activities and events are cancelled or postponed until further notice. We'll be back as soon as possible! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Today's two-sol plan will wrap up activities at Vera Rubin Ridge location "e." When we assessed the downlink data this morning, we were excited to see that ChemCam did a great job with some very precise pointing in the previous plan. At location "e" we have been focused on understanding small-scale features, like the tiny crystals and veins seen in the above ChemCam RMI image.

Today we're continuing our science activities at the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) location "e." It certainly seems that "e" should stand for "exciting," as we've collected quite a rich set of observations at this location, including extensive imaging and geochemical analyses.

What's in a name? From its rather innocuous sounding informal site name, you might not guess that location "e" would generate such excitement in the science team. The first thing the science team on shift did was decide to stay at the current location rather than drive away. This was primarily driven by the large suite of excellent science targets available in the workspace. These targets continue to help constrain the geologic story of the Vera Rubin Ridge.

Curiosity has made it to "Region e" of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) campaign. This location is a slight depression with exposed fractured bedrock that appears more "blue" from orbit than the surrounding region. In addition, the orbital evidence and observations from the ground suggest that this location is similar to "Region 10" that we visited just last week.

Today's image is a color version of part of the workspace image from the Sol 1925-1926 blog, which shows in greater detail the numerous layers and color variations that kept us at this spot for another round of science observations.

Curiosity's hard work over the holiday break paid off, giving the science team a rich collection of new data to assess and a new workspace to explore. The science team certainly got the year off to a bang with a very full plan at our new parking spot!

There's no real rest for the rover. We planned sols 1921-1924 on December 22 and 29. Earlier, the team had planned a minimal set of activities for the rover to carry out over Sols 1913-1920, letting the science and engineering teams spend a bit of time away from work.